How can "gamers" and "social justice warriors" get along?

[Vault101]

Eh? How did Metro 2033 treat women terribly? I've heard the arguments for Last Light being sexist, ranging from well-founded - "The only female character with any agency buggers off for most of the game, only reappearing for a stilted and awkward love-scene." - to less well-founded - "This game has strippers in it and that's sexist!" - but never anything about the first game.

thats because I meant Metro last light....my bad

the stripper thing...depends on hwo you handle them

also theres this conversation amongst some female performers that reeks so much of "THINGS WOMEN TALK ABOUT" its actually almost hilarious

If it's that much of an issue, you can simply not play games you find offensive you know ?

it is possible to like something while being aware of its faults...although this concept flys over so many people heads

You know or we can keep on as present with people yelling "you play this game you must be a RAPIST".[/quote]
excpet most pople aren't saying that and this continues misinterpretation is a real effing problem

 

[ultratog1028]

I personally deal with members of both groups near daily. I believe myself to be sympathetic to both sides. Personally, I think the knee-jerk reaction we gamers have developed in the face of criticism has became detrimental to us. There was a point early on that we needed it. When called sociopathic murderers during media crusades up until recently, the technique worked well; we refused to give the opposition any ground to stand on because there was none. For the most part though, we are more accepted as a medium. Everyone games in some form nowadays. However now anytime ANY criticism occurs we have a knee-jerk reaction. That should not be the answer for everything.

We do have issues in our medium. Race, gender, etc are some of them and SJW (seriously easier to type) are right in that regard. We NEED a wider representation of heroes and villains. Not every hero should be a burly white dude. Part of Video Games' appeal is Escapism. I can be something I'm not. If I want to play as another race, I'll play as another race. If I want to play my character as a woman, I should be aloud too. Character options should always be available. (Personally I loved the fact you can do most types of people in RPGs, especially Bioware games.)

However, as with every argument there is two sides, especially more extreme sides. I'm not saying replace EVERY Burly white dude with an Asexual Trans Eskimo Paraplegic. Hell some of those options wouldn't make sense in most games. Is there a sex scene or love interest? If not, sexual identity of a character shouldn't matter. But if there is, an option might be nice to make the love interest a guy or a girl. Hell this would just be making it more in depth of an experience just by having an option (though it does double the work usually.) as long as it made sense. Sexual identity of a character in COD may not make sense but COD doesn't need it. COD's goal is a power fantasy through war. But you could allow someone to play as a woman or another race. Hell, I think they are doing that next COD making this the first change COD has had since 2009.

Gamers: as long as it is an option (which is what most SJW seem to want; just an option) choice actively enhances a game. There is little drawback to you (though there is slight drawback to the companies making the game. though not much).

SJW: As long as you don't be stupid and take this too far, I'll be on your side. But you can't nit-pick at everything like you usually do. Existing Characters should stay true. This just means we'll need new characters. But I'm sorry, Metal Gear Solid probably isn't going to get some Asexual Transexual Eskimo Paraplegic Character. I think.

 

[NoeL]

There's no dichotomy between gamers and SJWs, so I'll assume you mean "conservative gamers" and "progressive gamers", respectively. Progressive gamers are those that want to make the gaming sphere more inclusive and diverse by addressing norms that may discourage certain people from getting into gaming (e.g. addressing the casual misogyny so more girls might be inclined to play). Conservative gamers (predominantly young, white males - the market the bulk of gaming targets) are understandably content with the current state of gaming, and believe any and all attempts to include people that aren't them should be done silently off in the corner somewhere ("girls can have their girl games, gays can have their gay games, but don't compromise the industry that's serving me so well!").

By their nature, conservatives will resist change, so there will always be that struggle. That struggle is exacerbated by progressives losing sight of their goal, not picking their battles, and throwing disproportionate outrage at little things (e.g. the Dragon's Crown fiasco).

In short, conservatives ("gamers") need to learn to share, and progressives ("SJWs") need to temper their outrage and make more reasonable criticisms.

Anyone who describes them-self as a "Warrior"

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think "social justice warrior" is a just pejorative term used by their opponents. Nobody calls themselves "social justice warrior", at least not unironically.

The solution is to influence the market by voting with your wallet if you like what you see, and voting with your feet if you don't - not by trying to socially engineer an existing gaming culture to fit an agenda, or trying to legislate and dictate what people "ought" to like.

So you think people should just stay silent and wait for the games industry to read their minds? Why are you so against people offering their suggestions on how they could improve gaming? By the way, nobody is trying to legislate what people out to like.

I do and encourage diversity in mediums...but when it feels like people are just changing things just so people don't get offended and face backlash, like they HAVE TO do it, or else they are racist, sexist, misogynistic ableist, etc. it bothers me.

Why not think of it as them changing not because they HAVE TO, but because they WANT TO? If someone said "You know, blacks should have more representation so let's make this character black" would you have the same problem? They're not doing it out of fear of backlash, they're doing it because they want to be more progressive.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

A lot of these "social justice warriors" seem to spend most of their time talking about stuff rather than actually getting it done. Posting anon rants on the internet isn't fighting, people. People do it all the time on YouTube.

 

[Artaneius]

I'm going to express how competitive gaming communities feel about these kind of issues, since I probably have the most experience with competitive gaming communities.

When it comes to competitive gaming for fighting games and shooters, no one in general cares about what other people think, feel, or want. All that matters to the vast majority of these communities is improving their skill, pwning people lower skilled than themselves, and gaining reputation. The community surrounding fighting games started with the arcades. And the community starting with shooters started with Quake and Unreal Tournament. In both of these, the strongest survived and the weak were lambasted and made an example of. Trash talking, sexism, racism, and other negative things will happen because to competitive gamers all that matters is winning. They will do whatever it takes to make sure they win and that includes doing rude things. An entire culture grew up treating video games as like a war type of thing. All that matters is victory and to hell with honor or equality.

The sad truth that for many competitive gamers, you don't have an opinion until your good. In fact, your not even a person worth of respect or even dignity if your not good. All you are is cannon fodder for their dominance. Competitive gaming is more like a war than it is like a sport. So when people start talking about what is "fair or just", the reply your going to get from a pure competitive gamer is probably going to be along the lines of, "Lol, your stats are terrible, not listening". Or from fighting games you will get "OMFG, play and do well in a tournament before whining".

Is it right or wrong? Doesn't matter. You don't expect an entire culture that started with the arcade era and early online shooters to change it's views. Especially when for almost two decades, we grew up in an environment where it was basically get good or STFU and quit playing. This was before matchmaking systems were around and allowed lesser skilled players to play other lesser skilled players. This is where the majority which are casual gamers were DESTROYED by their superior higher skilled players every single match. Which honestly should be.

 

[Vault101]

Yeh but actively seeming to hate something and still playing it isn't simply being aware of the faults. Especially if you're then calling to the developers for radical rules to be enforced or commonly used things to be banned from use in games "Because they're bad" If an aspect colours your experience that much then I'm sure I wouldn't enjoy my time if it had a huge impact.
.

except nobodys saying that

I think game companies should have more diverse protagonist, I think Aiden Peirce is the epitome of the industrys problem with diversity,

I'm not saying he should be banned or we should enforce rules for that kind of thing

again people interperet things in such stupid ways

if I hated something I wouldn't play/watch it...as for everything else I can find "faults" in ANYTHING weather or not I think those faults are issues depends on a lot of things

 

[DurkaDerper]

I personally just don't like the idea of an outsider who knows little about the subject to judge it, you wouldn't tell Yahtzee to review a movie and you wouldn't tell Rodger Ebert to review a video game. I feel like most of them only repeat issues we already know about and don't give solutions to said issues (To be fair, neither do the vast majority of us) I mean I quite like the way Jim sterling goes about "Social Justice" issues and I can agree with him on most subjects regarding the former. But the whole SJW thing is really almost the same thing as the neckbeard/fedorain term, mostly an insult that groups in those who show the worst of a whole, and in the case of SJW, I can't tell if it's a vocal minority who speak for the majority or a vocal minority who taint the ideals of the majority.

 

[Dragonlayer]

Eh? How did Metro 2033 treat women terribly? I've heard the arguments for Last Light being sexist, ranging from well-founded - "The only female character with any agency buggers off for most of the game, only reappearing for a stilted and awkward love-scene." - to less well-founded - "This game has strippers in it and that's sexist!" - but never anything about the first game.

thats because I meant Metro last light....my bad

the stripper thing...depends on hwo you handle them

also theres this conversation amongst some female performers that reeks so much of "THINGS WOMEN TALK ABOUT" its actually almost hilarious

Ah fairy snuff, figured as much. But I didn't think there was anything wrong with the strippers: the section was about a shady deal taking place in the "crime city" of Venice and what better place for a shady deal then a risque cabaret/brothel? Especially in a post-apocalyptic society, where basic elements of fun civilization like books and video games are virtually non-existent. Though I do vaguely recall one of the dancers talking about needing new make-up and "feminine" stuff....

 

[Dying_Jester]

Short answer, no. But that doesn't mean they don't push forward new themes/characters through their constant nagging.

The easiest way for me to think about it is like this.
SJWs have an ability. This ability, when activated, enrages the target but causes a debuff to the users charisma. If used too often on the same target the user gains an automatic debuff whenever they are within the same area as the target and any they associate with.

As I said, it doesn't make them bad, but when they don't understand how to converse with someone who is on the opposite side of the argument or neutral then nobody has a good time and friendships go up in flames.

 

[Batou667]

Conservative gamers (predominantly young, white males - the market the bulk of gaming targets) are understandably content with the current state of gaming, and believe any and all attempts to include people that aren't them should be done silently off in the corner somewhere ("girls can have their girl games, gays can have their gay games, but don't compromise the industry that's serving me so well!").

Well... what's so wrong about this line of thinking, aside from the deliberately coarse way of putting it? We keep getting told that nobody's going to "take our games away" and that it's "not a zero-sum game". So, yes, I'd be perfectly happy if this hypothetical Liberal New Wave of gaming didn't visibly alter the kind of games I'm currently enjoying. Unless you're implying that we should expect gaming culture to alter, not just broaden?

The solution is to influence the market by voting with your wallet if you like what you see, and voting with your feet if you don't - not by trying to socially engineer an existing gaming culture to fit an agenda, or trying to legislate and dictate what people "ought" to like.

So you think people should just stay silent and wait for the games industry to read their minds? Why are you so against people offering their suggestions on how they could improve gaming? By the way, nobody is trying to legislate what people out to like.

No - far from staying silent, I think that the strongest message you can possibly send to the industry, and the one form of protest that they're 100% guaranteed to sit up and listen to, is by financially backing games/companies that reflect your tastes and values and conversely not buying games that you find boring or distasteful. If there's a demand, the market will cater to it, because what keeps the marketing executives at Activision up at night is the thought of how to get more money, not masterminding schemes about how they can best marginalise women and perpetuate racist stereotypes through the medium of pixels on a screen.

The "progressives" should put their money where their mouths are, and with the likes of Kickstarter that's easier than ever to actually do. What isn't constructive is to emulate conservative clowns like Jack Thompson in making flimsy claims that X in games actually causes X in real life; or else go the moralising, awareness-raising slacktivism route by endlessly clamouring about how "problematic" everything in games is. If that's not at least an implicit attempt to dictate to people and shame them into changing their consumption habits, I'm not sure what is.

 

[agent9]

You have to very polarized groups. My main issue with SJW is that a lot of them seem to bait controversy at most, and at least ignore context and intent. I've had people tell me how the option to kill hookers in GTA is misogynistic. I disagree in that GTA is a game about being a criminal in most cases. In a game where you kill cops for the hell of it, including numerous innocents, killing a hooker is the biggest tabu they could think of. talk about picking and choosing. You can argue real life relations and such (because violence against prostitutes is a legitimate real life issue), but there are a few problems.

Firstly: What about shooting innocents, is that not a big problem and relatable to events like newtown or sandy hook, real life tragedies.

Second: some people try to build a twinkie defence and effectively push the idea that these types of acts can inspire the real thing. I guess the odyssey caused quite the killing spree.

all this stems from lack of understanding or acknowledging the context and intent that a game presents. no matter what you want to ***** about there is a difference between a game like dragons crown (anatomically incorrect but relatively inoffensive game), and rapelay ( willfully offensive and inconsiderate game). another example would be mario and it's constant knight in shining armor trope. the game isn't sexist, it tells a bit of a story using a classic trope that has been around for ages.

A brief point tying into the above paragraph is having a bit of thick skin. some people are too easily offended. just because you're offended doesn't mean you're right, it doesn't even mean you have a case. life is too short to take everything so personally.

In both camps people are too stubborn to just open up for a minute and reflect on everything being said. SJW's stand on their "moral" soap box, and gamers rage. Both also need to recognise a directors creative and artistic freedom.

Gamers need to calm the fuck down too, they wont take away your dead or alive 5. it is a valid criticism to call certain aspects of a game a cop out or poorly designed if they are. it's also ok for someone to suggest a female protagonist and it won;t kill you to play as her.

overall, everyone is an ass, and nobody wants to admit to it.

 

[Batou667]

No one complains when every single movie doesn't cater to their interests. No one complains when every book isn't to their tastes. No one complains when every song on the radio isn't one they personally enjoy. Games, on the other hand, are currently being scrutinized from all sides with the apparent expectation that every single game must appeal to every gamer.. and this is just impossible given that everyone has different tastes and different desires in what they want to see in the medium. What needs to happen is that people need to realize that if you don't like a game, especially if it's one getting a lot of buzz or generating a lot of interest, it's not the end of the world. The status quo may be challenged, but the type of games you like aren't going to disappear.

Exactly this. In no other entertainment medium that I can think of would each new release be viewed as, and criticised as, some kind of exemplar (or whipping boy) for the medium as a whole. When a shitty movie gets released, people don't claim that it gives cinema in general a bad name, or that it makes them ashamed to call themselves a DVD-owner. Nor does this zero-sum mentality exist in other mediums - Classical music fans don't spend all their time pointing out flaws in Heavy Metal to try to make their own position look better, sculptors don't see themselves as in competition with digital artists, etc.

It would be the hallmark of a truly grown-up medium if we could collectively accept that there's a plurality of demographics with a plurality of tastes, and the medium is big enough to accommodate us all. Not everything that gets released is for you, so it's OK if you don't like it. Don't buy it, don't play it, and concentrate on the parts of the medium that DO reflect your tastes. The "stop liking what I don't like!" stance is just childish.

 

[Vault101]

No one complains when every single movie doesn't cater to their interests. No one complains when every book isn't to their tastes. No one complains when every song on the radio isn't one they personally enjoy. Games, on the other hand, are currently being scrutinized from all sides with the apparent expectation that every single game must appeal to every gamer.. .

thats becuasr there are MORE movies and books ect and they are more diverse and even then the gender disparity is a big (and needless) problem in blockbusters

gaming is not that diverse (and yeah including the indies)

 

[mrdude2010]

SJW's are fundamentally incapable of getting along with anyone, because everyone is somehow guilty of something or other that fits their massive list of horrible, evil, crimes against society. No point in even trying to come to a common ground with them.


The normal people who want better representation of different races, genders, sexual orientations, etc. could easily find common ground with gamers, though. It just takes game companies starting to branch out a bit in terms of what stories they write. Maybe they could start bringing in outside writers who aren't middle class white males to try to better understand protagonists and characters that fall outside gaming's usual milieu.

 

[carnex]

if you ask me I would say the following

1) Don't jump on people's nuts. Whoever you are, on whatever side you are on, you are not all knowing paragon of goodness and knowledge. You have and opinion and if that opinion is not backed by valid research it's just your opinion and nothing else. Treat it as such.

2) Be positive rather than negative. Accusations will not get much if anything done. Point out what is good and state what you would like. Do not throw around you imaginary social weight or gaming cred. Act like a normal, somewhat humble human being.

3) Realize that there is place for everyone in this medium, for games with absolutely anything. From deepest stories to most simplistic twitch fests, from educational to dumb games, from most socially responsible to games that will disgust majority of population.

4) Whenever you want to write something, especially as reply to previous commenter or narrator, shut up and move away from keyboard. Wait a bit for things to settle. Often you will change quite a bit about you following speach/writing.

 

[NoeL]

Conservative gamers (predominantly young, white males - the market the bulk of gaming targets) are understandably content with the current state of gaming, and believe any and all attempts to include people that aren't them should be done silently off in the corner somewhere ("girls can have their girl games, gays can have their gay games, but don't compromise the industry that's serving me so well!").

Well... what's so wrong about this line of thinking, aside from the deliberately coarse way of putting it? We keep getting told that nobody's going to "take our games away" and that it's "not a zero-sum game". So, yes, I'd be perfectly happy if this hypothetical Liberal New Wave of gaming didn't visibly alter the kind of games I'm currently enjoying. Unless you're implying that we should expect gaming culture to alter, not just broaden?

Making games more enjoyable and accessible to others doesn't, or at least shouldn't make them less enjoyable for you. If you need your games to be sexist, homophobic etc. in order to enjoy them there's something wrong there, and I don't think the games industry should be encouraging that - regardless of whether or not it's more profitable.

The problem with not addressing these things in the AAA market is that the AAA market is far and away the most visible face of gaming to anyone not already part of the culture (and even within the culture there are plenty of people that will avoid any game that has the "indie" label because they assume it'll be cheap, artsy shit). For many people it is gaming. It presents that barrier to entry, and it's also needlessly divisive to have "games" (for young, straight, white males), then "girl games", "black games", "gay games" etc. "Games" should appear accessible to everyone, rather than the narrow (though large) 'young, straight, white male' market. It's kind of the same thing with "hardcore" games vs "casual" games. The "hardcore gamers" spit on casual gamers because they're seen as the "other", but if we were able to culturally lump hardcore and casual gamers as "gamers" we'd see comradery instead of conflict. It's human psychology.

The solution is to influence the market by voting with your wallet if you like what you see, and voting with your feet if you don't - not by trying to socially engineer an existing gaming culture to fit an agenda, or trying to legislate and dictate what people "ought" to like.

So you think people should just stay silent and wait for the games industry to read their minds? Why are you so against people offering their suggestions on how they could improve gaming? By the way, nobody is trying to legislate what people out to like.

No - far from staying silent, I think that the strongest message you can possibly send to the industry, and the one form of protest that they're 100% guaranteed to sit up and listen to, is by financially backing games/companies that reflect your tastes and values and conversely not buying games that you find boring or distasteful. If there's a demand, the market will cater to it, because what keeps the marketing executives at Activision up at night is the thought of how to get more money, not masterminding schemes about how they can best marginalise women and perpetuate racist stereotypes through the medium of pixels on a screen.

The "progressives" should put their money where their mouths are, and with the likes of Kickstarter that's easier than ever to actually do. What isn't constructive is to emulate conservative clowns like Jack Thompson in making flimsy claims that X in games actually causes X in real life; or else go the moralising, awareness-raising slacktivism route by endlessly clamouring about how "problematic" everything in games is. If that's not at least an implicit attempt to dictate to people and shame them into changing their consumption habits, I'm not sure what is.

As I mentioned before, the visibility of the AAA market makes the playing field severely unlevelled. A AAA game with a metacritic score of 10% is still almost certainly going to sell more copies than an indie game rated 98% (with rare exceptions like Minecraft that breach obscurity). You could show both of those games to the people that bought the AAA game and find that 90% prefer the indie game, but they still bought the AAA game because they didn't know about the indie game. Smaller games will very rarely outsell AAA games based on quality and appeal because they just don't have the same market visibility.

And that's the problem in a nutshell. People won't get to "vote with their wallets" effectively until highly visible, SJW-approved AAA games hit the market, and that's not going to happen on its own because publishers can only look at what's been successful in the past when mitigating the risks of developing their next game. AAA games are just too expensive to produce to try anything new/risky, which is why we've seen so much homogenisation over the last generation. But again, the Joe "what's an indie?" Publics out there don't know any better - new AAA games, even if they look like boring slop to older/more experienced gamers, is "gaming" to them. It's what they're invested in, what they're looking forward to, what they know... and they're never going to know differently unless we serve them something different.

That is why progressive gamers are so vocal about change in the AAA market. Backing Kickstarter projects and financially supporting games that do everything right is important, and people are doing that too, but it's never going to be enough. The big publishers don't give a shit about a critically acclaimed indie darling that sold 50,000 copies when the latest schlock they squeezed out from between their buttcheeks sold 2 million (and again, it didn't sell 2 million because it was a better, more appealing game than the indie darling, it sold 2 million because it had market visibility with brand recognition, reviews, shelf space, lets plays, ads etc.)

 

[Kingjackl]

I think the easiest way to find a middle ground is to stop acting like it's an 'us vs them' situation. "Social justice warrior" is a loaded term, often used to shut down conversation, and reduce a person to a meaningless strawman. There is a discussion to be had about diversity in video games, but it's not going anywhere while people are getting hung up on meaningless back-and-forthing.

At the end of the day, perhaps the people who are so aggressively opposed to the idea of opening up a discussion about diversity (aka the ones who unironically use "social justice warrior") should probably take the time to consider the stakes of the argument. Clearly there's a movement, clearly there are people who are dissatisfied with the current crop of diversity in video games, so why are you so opposed to it? It's the classic reactionary mindset, except there's nothing to be gained from trying to preserve the status quo. Either things stay the same or they change, and if they do change, what have you got to lose?

 

[Lieju]

I think the easiest way to find a middle ground is to stop acting like it's an 'us vs them' situation. "Social justice warrior" is a loaded term, often used to shut down conversation, and reduce a person to a meaningless strawman. There is a discussion to be had about diversity in video games, but it's not going anywhere while people are getting hung up on meaningless back-and-forthing.

Yeah, this.

The absolute majority of people complaining about these issues in games ARE gamers, especially if they hang out on a forum like this (which is where most gamers run into these kinds of arguments, I'm willing to bet.)

In general it would be nice to be able to have civil conversations.

And look at the things you like with critical eye. Video-game fandoms can have very fanboyish attitudes in general; 'You criticized the amount of content in this game, u r a hator lol.'

But I think it's worse for gender/sexuality/minorities representation.

People,it's okay to like flawed things.
I like plenty of things that don't have good female or gay representation, I acknowledge those flaws.

Even if you don't consider them flaws, and aren't personally bothered that the thing you like doesn't have any well-developed female characters, you don't need to take it so seriously and as such a personal attack if someone criticizes it.

I don't know how common those dreaded SJW's who want to blame you personally for being evil or whatever are, but I can't say I've seen much of the kind of attitude that 'if you like this you're evil'.

I see much more the kind of knee-jerk reaction that 'if someone calls the thing I like problematic, they mean I'm a bad person', which makes it seems like you want to feel persecuted.